• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.175-180
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• 2023

Mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) can be a promising alternative for the solution of dye removal from coloured effluents. Polymeric membranes are widely used due to their good film-forming ability, flexibility, separation properties, and cost. However, they have low mechanical, chemical, and thermal resistances. Moreover, the fouling of polymeric membranes is high because of their hydrophobic nature. Hence, there is an increasing interest in organic-inorganic hybrid membranes as a new-generation membrane material. It has been shown that carbon nanotubes have the potential to increase the material properties of polymers with their low density, high strength, hardness, and exceptional aspect ratio. In this work, carbon nanotubes blended MMMs were prepared and methyl orange removal efficiency of them was investigated. Compared to the bare membranes, MMMs showed not only increased hydrophilicity, water content, and pure water flux but also increased methyl orange rejection and flux recovery

• Journal of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry
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• v.67
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• pp.156-163
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• 2018

High-performance mixed-matrix membranes that comprise both zeolitic imidazolate framework-8 (ZIF-8) and graphene oxide (GO) were synthesized with a solution casting technique to realize excellent $CO_2/CH_4$ separation. The incorporation of ZIF-8 nanocrystals alone in ODPA-TMPDA polyimide can be used to significantly enhance $CO_2$ permeability compared with that of pure ODPA-TMPDA. Meanwhile, the addition of a GO nanostack alone in ODPA-TMPDA contributes to improved $CO_2/CH_4$ selectivity. Hence, a composite membrane that contains both fillers displays significant enhancements in $CO_2$ permeability (up to 60%) and $CO_2/CH_4$ selectivity (up to 28%) compared with those of pure polymeric membrane. Furthermore, in contrast to the ZIF-8 mixed-matrix membrane, which showed decreased mechanical stability, it was found that the incorporation of GO could improve the mechanical strength of mixed-matrix membranes. Overall, the synergistic effects of the use of both fillers together are successfully demonstrated in this paper. Such significant improvements in the mixed-matrix membrane's $CO_2/CH_4$ separation performance and mechanical strength suggest a feasible and effective approach for potential biogas upgrading and natural gas purification.

• Proceedings of the Membrane Society of Korea Conference
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• 2008.05a
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• pp.51-57
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• 2008

Mixed matrix membranes of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA), loaded with phosphomolybdic heteropolyacid (HPA) and crosslinked with glutaraldehyde have been prepared by the solution casting technique. Pervaporation (PV) experiments have been performed at $30^{\circ}C$ to separate water-isopropanol feed mixtures containing 10 to 40 wt.% of water. The membranes were characterized by DSC and DMTA to understand their thermal behavior and mechanical strength properties. At high content (i.e. 7 wt.% with respect to weight of PVA) of HPA, the mixed matrix membranes could extract water efficiently on the permeate side with a selectivity of 90,000 and a flux of 0.032 $kg/m^2h$ for 10 wt.% of water containing feed mixture (the lowest feed composition of water studied). Flux of the mixed matrix membranes decreased with increasing concentrations of HPA.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.6
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• pp.463-469
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• 2016

In this research, a new expectation in enhancing the PES (polyethersulfone) polymer phase inversion membrane performances with nanoparticles is proposed by using ZnO. This paper investigated the synthesis of PES phase inversion membranes including ZnO nanoparticles and evaluates the performance of these mixed matrix membranes. The PES-ZnO mixed matrix membranes were fabricated by phase inversion method using the PES-ZnO-NMP(N-methyl-1-pyrrolidone) casting solutions with low ZnO nanoparticles content of 0.375 wt%. The influence of ZnO nanoparticles on the characteristics of PES-ZnO mixed matrix membranes was investigated with scanning electron microscope observations of membrane cross-sections, contact angle measurements, tensile strength measurements, pure water flux measurements and ultrafiltration experiments of BSA solution. Those results showed that the performance advancements in comparison with the pure PES membrane without ZnO in terms of increasing hydrophilicity as well as reducing membrane fouling by adding ZnO nanoparticles even in low concentration.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.432-438
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• 2013

Mixed-matrix membranes (MMMs) containing MIL-100(Fe), a MOF type, were fabricated in this study. MMMs up to 30 wt% MOF loading were prepared, and their gas permeabilities were tested. $H_2$, $CO_2$, $O_2$, $N_2$, and $CH_4$ gas permeabilities increased with the MOF loading, while $SF_6$, the largest kinetic diameter in this study, exhibited reduction of gas permeability with the loading. Ideal gas selectivity of $N_2/SF_6$ improved by 40% as compared with pure polyimide membrane, suggesting the proposed MMMs were suitable for $N_2/SF_6$ separation.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.51-60
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• 2019

In order to improve gas separation properties of polymeric membranes which have been widely applied in the industry field, aluminosilicate hollow nanoparticles named as allophanes were synthesized by sol-gel method and formulated in Poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS) matrix to investigate the gas separation properties of PDMS membrane. Transmission electron microscope (TEM), Energy dispersive X-ray analysis (EDX), X-ray diffractometer (XRD), Surface area and pore size analyzer (BET) and Fourier transform infrared spectrophotometer (FTIR) were carried out to characterize the synthetic allophanes. Then the PDMS mixed matrix membranes were prepared by adding different volume fraction of allophanes. To examine the effect of allophanes addition in PDMS matrix using unmodified allophane and modified ones, the gas permeation experiments were performed using oxygen, nitrogen, methane and carbon dioxide. As the volume fraction of modified allophane increased up to 4.05 Vol% the permeability of four test gases through PDMS mixed matrix membranes increased. Also, the selectivity of $O_2/N_2$ and $CO_2/CH_4$ increased with the contents of the modified allophane. Further improvement of gas separation properties of PDMS mixed matrix membranes containing higher volume percent of allophanes can be expected as long as well dispersion of allophanes in PDMS matrix can be achieved for better PDMS membranes.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.30 no.5
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• pp.319-325
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• 2020

In this study, we developed mixed matrix membranes by blending thermoplastic elastomer, i.e. polystyreneblock-polybutadiene-block-polystyrene (SBS) block copolymer with the synthesized UiO-66 particles for CO₂/N₂ gas separation. To investigate the effect of UiO-66 particles in the SBS matrix, we prepared different mixed matrix membranes (MMMs) by varying the mass ratio of SBS and UiO-66 in the blend. To fabricate well-dispersed UiO-66, the SBS/UiO-66 mixture was sonicated and stirred thoroughly. The physico-chemical properties of prepared membranes were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) and scanning electron microscope (SEM). The gas separation performance was measured by time-lag method. The permeability of the MMMs increased significantly as the content of UiO-66 increased, but the CO₂/N₂ selectivity did not decrease significantly. The membranes containing 20% of UiO-66 particles showed the best performance with the CO₂ permeability and CO₂/N₂ selectivity of 663.8 barrer and 13.3, respectively. This result showed performance closer to upper bound than pure SBS membrane in the Robeson plot, as the added UiO-66 particles did not significantly sacrifice selectivity and more than doubled gas permeability.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.38-42
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• 2016

Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP), which is glassy polymer to have amide functional group, was induced to fabricate the facilitated olefin transport membranes for olefin/paraffin separation. Separation performance for the mixed gas consisting of propylene and propane (50 : 50 vol%) was measured by gas chromatography and bubble flow meter. The properties of membranes were confirmed by scanning electron microscope and FT-IR. The results of long-term separation tests showed the selectivity of 15 and permeance of 1.3 GPU. The membranes was compared with poly(2-ethyl-2-oxazoline) $(POZ)/AgBF_4/Al(NO_3)_3$ membranes and the characteristics were confirmed as polymer matrix for facilitated transport membranes.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.4
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• pp.309-321
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• 2015

We report in this study the synthesis of mixed matrix reverse osmosis membranes by interfacial polymerization (IP) of thin film nanocomposite (TFNC) on porous polysulfone supports (PS). This paper investigates the synthesis of ZnO nanoparticles (NPs) using the sol-gel processing technique and evaluates the performance of mixed matrix membranes reached by these aerogel NPs. Aqueous m-phenyl diamine (MPD) and organic trimesoyl chloride (TMC)-NPs mixture solutions were used in the IP process. The reaction of MPD and TMC at the interface of PS substrates resulted in the formation of the thin film composite (TFC). NPs of ZnO with a size of about 25 nm were used for the fabrication of the TFNC membranes. These membranes were characterized and evaluated in comparison with neat TFC ones. Their performances were evaluated based on the water permeability and salt rejection. Experimental results indicated that the NPs improved membrane performance under optimal concentration of NPs. By changing the content of the filler, better hydrophilicity was obtained; the contact angle was decreased from $74^{\circ}$ to $32^{\circ}$. Also, the permeate water flux was increased from 26 to 49 L/m2.h when the content of NPs is 0.1 (wt.%) with the maintaining of lower salt passage of 1%.

• Membrane Journal
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.434-442
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• 2021

Poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) membrane has a good membrane durability because of its high mechanical resistance, thermal and chemical stability. However, the strong hydrophobic property of PVDF membrane can induce a low water permeability and easy fouling by proteins and organic matters. In order to improve the anti-fouling properties of PVDF membrane, the PVDF mixed matrix asymmetric membranes impregnated with biofunctional material 𝛽-cyclodextrin (𝛽-CD) in the membrane structure were prepared by phase inversion method. The membrane filtration experiments of pure water and BSA solution were performed using the PVDF/𝛽-CD mixed matrix asymmetric membranes prepared according to the 𝛽-CD contents. The experiments showed that the introduction of 𝛽-CD into the PVDF polymer matrix contributed to increase in the hydrophilic property of the PVDF membranes, and this led to the reduction of contact angles and improvement of anti-fouling properties. The PVDF/𝛽-CD membrane which was prepared using the dope solution with a 2 wt% 𝛽-CD content represented 64 L/m²·h of pure water flux, 95% of BSA rejection and maximum 80% of flux enhancements compared to flux results of the pristine PVDF membrane.